Letters

Pretend mass

We need to build a mass movement. A real mass revolutionary party can only come out of a mass movement. To pretend to build a “mass party” first is putting the cart before the horse (‘How can we supersede the sects?’, May 2). A pretend mass party with 7,000-8,000 members will only serve as an electoral structure to run a few candidates.

Why can’t we build a mass movement? Because we talk to ourselves! We do not listen to workers - left newspapers preach to workers and tell them what to do. Or we discuss in our newspapers who was expelled from other groups - just the sort thing to excite workers. The left also often waits with Buddhist fatality for the mass movement to come to it.

We need to build an international revolutionary party, but that is an organic process which will come out of the debate taking place all over the world. Meanwhile, there’s nothing wrong with having several mass revolutionary parties.

Pretend mass
Pretend mass

Unity debate

Preston Left Unity had its founding meeting on May 2. As the (now) elected Preston Left Unity organiser, I was very surprised by the turnout at the launch meeting. Eight people turned up, which was good, considering around five other people emailed me prior to the meeting expressing an interest in Left Unity; they just couldn’t make the meeting. The gathering was certainly an unusual one - not one person was over the age of 30, with five of the attendees in their first year of college (myself included).

Whilst Tina Becker and Michael Copestake point out in their letter (May 2) that some felt the Left Unity meeting in Sheffield was too politically “narrow”, this was not the case with the Preston launch meeting! In attendance was myself, an ex-member of the Green Party and Green Left faction, a member of the Lancashire Anarchist Federation (in a personal capacity), a full-time Socialist Workers Party organiser, an ex-member of the Labour Party and a scattering of apolitical students - one of whom said they “agreed” with the government’s contractionary fiscal policy.

The general discussion was very progressive. The meeting agreed that any new party formed from the Left Unity appeal should not be focused on electoralism. It was felt that elections should merely be viewed as a platform for the furthering of local campaigns and the opportunity to politically agitate people, and that real change comes from the streets, not the council chambers and parliament.

The group recognised that Syriza’s electoral and non-electoral success has largely occurred through the party symbiotically entwining itself with grassroots campaigns and unions, and that a healthy balance of both electioneering and campaigning was the formula for success. The meeting adopted the belief that any new party created from the appeal should allow for permanent factions to be formed. Such an inevitably ‘broad church’ party will need factions for like-minded individuals to organise in order to prevent disfranchisement. The group felt that due to Left Unity’s inherently broad nature it was unlikely that allowing factions to form would lead to sectarianism. I was ecstatic, given the politically diverse beliefs present, that the group agreed that the new party should be explicitly anti-capitalist in its message and propaganda.

The group ended the general discussion on the question of whether the new party should be centralised. Whilst the anarchist comrade argued for local group autonomy, it was felt that due to Left Unity’s (here’s that phrase again) broad nature, it would be irresponsible to lend too much autonomy to local groups in case they acted outside the party’s (to be formed) central tenets. This conclusion was reached when comrades considered the situation in Brighton and Bristol, where the local Green parties had abused their autonomy by passing cuts on the respective city councils, despite the national party repeating the well-worn mantra that it is ‘anti-cuts’.

Sadly the event was not as picturesque as the above would suggest. Whilst the three of us who were fairly clued up on left politics (the anarchist, the SWP member and I) managed to abandon our differences when trying to enlighten the apolitical students, the old party lines could not be completely disregarded. During the general discussion we briefly went over whether the new party should adopt a federal structure, with different parties forming a broad coalition, similar to that of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (which polled 2.5% of the vote in the 117 county council seats it contested last week) or whether the party should have an individual membership system, like the Green Party of England and Wales, whilst allowing permanent factions to form (like the Green Left).

It was at this point that the SWP organiser made it clear that he would not leave the SWP to join the new left-of-Labour party. He then took it upon himself to praise the virtues of the SWP and explain why he couldn’t possibly leave the party in a five-minute monologue. Neither the anarchist nor I had the heart to intervene; we just shared a rueful smile and waited for him to finish his speech. When he did so, I explained, in no uncertain terms, that no decisions had yet been made about how membership will work and that one may be able to be a member of two groups, as is allowed in Respect, or the new party may copy the Tusc model, in which case the SWP as an organisation could be part of the new party.

To this the comrade replied that the infamous central committee of his organisation had deliberated with Ken Loach who, apparently, told the CC that any new party which emerges from Left Unity will have an individual membership system, as opposed to a federally orientated system. This claim is nonsensical to the extreme! Any decision taken by Left Unity will be made by the provisional coordinating committee, to be elected at the May 11 delegate meeting in London at the very least. Although I suspect that such a major decision would need to be debated in depth at a conference of sorts, the idea that Ken Loach can either implement a policy decision on his own accord or magically use some well hidden Mystic Meg powers to predict which way a future conference will vote on the issue of membership structure is ridiculous.

Clearly this evidence-lacking claim was a shameful attempt by the comrade to create a false ultimatum in which the meeting attendees would have to choose between the SWP or Left Unity and that both were mutually exclusive. Ken Loach does not dictate to the members of Left Unity. In fact one could argue that the ‘discounted’ £50 he is charging local groups to host a public screening of his film The spirit of 45 suggests that he is not all that concerned with uniting the left. The fantastical claim the SWP member made was unfounded and, given it was coupled with a five-minute monologue promoting the SWP, suggests his motive for attending the meeting was one born of divisiveness, and that he himself places little utility upon uniting the left. Perhaps he and Ken Loach have more in common than previously thought?

Despite this minor setback, I maintain the view that the meeting went well. Sadly some comrades have seen the most recent attempt to unite the left as an opportunity to recruit for their own sect. Both the Weekly Worker and the CPGB have made tremendous and consistent efforts to unite the left. Now the chance has presented itself, it would be foolish to ignore it. Whilst Left Unity is not perfect, I agree with Nick Wrack’s article that factional differences need to be put aside in the interest of uniting the left (‘How can we supersede the sects?’, May 2). The CPGB has shown its commitment to forming a new Marxist party by engaging with the International Socialist Network and I sincerely hope the party fully engages with Left Unity to counteract the opportunist elements attempting to derail the project. Capitalism is ripe to be overthrown, yet the largest revolutionary party is degenerating, union membership amongst the workers is on a downward trajectory, class-consciousness is at an all-time low, the Tories are forcing untold thousands into poverty, and we are seeing no organised fightback from the left.

John Holloway is absolutely right when he talks about capitalism being a windowless room with a myriad of cracks in the walls. Each crack is an act which defies the law of capitalism, such as volunteering at your local charity shop when under capitalism you ought to sell your labour-power. Sometimes these cracks release ‘screams’, which take the form of riots (like the London riots in 2011), or they can manifest themselves in other radical direct action, such as occupations (take the 2010 battle of Millbank, for example). The downfall of capitalism will only be realised when these screams can be synchronised and connected. Such a synchronisation, on both a national and international scale, will only come about with the presence of partyism.

The potential for resistance is there, the screams are presenting themselves, and as communists we have the obligation to seize the opportunity Left Unity presents to organise as one entity and overthrow capitalism. I will finish by using a phrase with which the SWP have labelled one of their stillborn operations, to call for the grotesquely overdue end of capitalism. As communists we need to unite, and Left Unity offers us this opportunity. The time has come to ... unite the resistance.

Unity debate
Unity debate

Reminder

The UK Independence Party has certainly achieved a major electoral success and is shaking the establishment. If only it was the Communist Party riding such an electoral insurgency of around 25% of the popular vote. Ukip are unlikely to go away any time soon.

I think Ukip’s success had very little to do with Europe or the European Union. This is about large sections of Middle England feeling unrepresented and offended by the effete social liberalism of Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Miliband. It is about older generations of fairly well-to-do middle class people living in the shires, villages and suburbs, feeling and seeing their beloved environments being slowly transformed and changed by mass migration. Some will be members of the lower strata of the broadly defined capitalist class - ie, the 10% who can live off interest, dividends and savings. However, most will, objectively, be members of the traditional working class who, in line with traditional values, have worked hard all their lives in order to achieve a degree of comfort and security and something to hand down to their children, giving them a better start and a better future.

They feel newer people are ‘different’. Their skins may be of different colours, they may speak different languages, eat different foods, behave in different ways and, among their own communities, have perhaps higher levels of integration, cohesion and solidarity. Very different from the ferocious, self-centred individualism and competitiveness that lies behind the veneer of sleepy Middle England.

Middle England feels threatened, marginalised and increasingly excluded. This is not necessarily racist. It is not racist to feel people of other backgrounds and cultures, ways of speaking and doing things are different, and to prefer the comfort of one’s own kind. It is as much, if not more, a question of class.

Racism is when people feel not only that others are ‘different’, but they are somehow inferior as well. We need to be very careful about the ‘racist’ epithet. Most Ukip supporters would not regard themselves as racist and are probably not, if one uses the tighter definition I suggest. Calling them racist will (and indeed has) pushed Middle England into the hands of a quite hard-right, reactionary political party.

I would suggest that the recent orchestrated mass celebrations and carefully generated ‘feel good’ factor around the royal wedding, the diamond jubilee and the Olympic games have done a great deal to pump up feelings of sentiment, patriotism and support for ‘traditional English values’ and affection for an image of ‘traditional’ England and Great Britannia. And this deliberate awakening and stirring has translated directly into votes for Ukip.

All this is a deliberate and carefully worked through strategy by the ruling class. The middle class consensus, built up by Blairism and continued by Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Miliband, does not represent an adequate political and social basis for the final removal of the post-war welfare state required by British capitalism.

The likely prospect of a Labour-Liberal coalition after 2015, and the Liberal Democrats playing a permanent governmental role in perpetuating the social liberalism and consensus of the soggy centre, fills our ruling class with dread and is forcing their hand. A major realignment of the hard right is being worked through, seeking to split away from the soggy centre of Cameron/Clegg/Miliband. The aim is to create a new formation on the right, probably including very large sections of the existing Conservative Party, and certainly Ukip, which will present a clear nationalist alternative to Cameron/Clegg/Miliband and which will be capable of winning general elections, which the present Conservative Party is not.

Demographic changes are working in favour of this project. The population of Britain as a whole is ageing in the sense that an increasing majority are older. The majority of Ukip supporters are over 50. And the parts of the British population who are ageing the most are traditional white working and middle class people. The Thatcher death and funeral was a useful reminder and refresher for the ruling class of the last time it developed such a bold and radical transformative strategy.

Reminder
Reminder

Thanks, Maggie

Many thanks for your recent coverage of the life and legacy of Margaret Thatcher. One of her intentions was to eliminate the influence of Marxism on intellectuals and class-conscious workers. In this respect she was an abject failure.

Like many of her generation and upbringing, she was unable to distinguish between Marxism and Stalinism. Nevertheless, she made a small contribution to ending the Soviet system and the political influence of its critical and uncritical supporters in trade unions and the social democratic left. This has had the unintended consequence of creating a favourable environment for the revival of a pristine form of socialism and communism. For this reason alone, Marxists can rejoice and be thankful.

Thanks, Maggie
Thanks, Maggie

Workers’ war

David Walters points out that the battles of Khalkhin Gol occurred in 1939, not 1941. Quite right, which is why I had written: “By 1941 [rather than in 1941], the USSR had seen off the Japanese in the largest tank battle ever, to such an extent that Japan decided it was easier to attack the US rather than USSR.”

The fact remains that already by that time the USSR, under its own steam and despite huge hostility from the surrounding imperialist states, had managed not only to develop its industrial production, but also its technological development to such a stage that it was not only able to defeat Japan, which by then was an advanced capitalist, industrial power, but to do so on such a scale that Japan believed the United States was an easier target! This is just 15 years after the industrialisation programme in the USSR had begun and after all of the devastation caused by the civil war and intervention.

David says that Britain was only penned up “like a wolverine in a cave”. But, as Trotsky pointed out, the problem that a workers’ state in Britain would face is precisely that it depends upon huge amounts of imports and could be easily cut off and starved out. It was actually touch and go whether Churchill would survive after 1940. Halifax was sending his representatives to negotiate with Hitler, and Hitler had offered to allow Britain to keep its colonies if they gave him a free hand across Europe. Had the Italians not been so badly prepared, needing Rommel to come to their aid, Britain would have lost North Africa before the US entered the war (the US only really began military operations in north Africa in 1943), and it would have been ‘bye-bye, Britain’, because it would have had no oil and no supplies from the empire via Suez. That’s probably why after 1940 there was opposition to Churchill from people like Stafford Cripps, who was seen as an alternative leader and proposed forming an alliance with the USSR - which could have provided the necessary oil and other materials.

David then spins the roulette wheel of historical fortune in the hope that he can deny the industrial and technological development in the USSR, by claiming that it was the ‘The US wot won it’ all along. That reminds me of the Dad’s army line that in World War I the only thing the US charged was the interest on its loans. And, of course, the Arctic convoys going back to Britain were heavily laden with Russian gold in payment for US supplies. David seems to forget that, by the time the US actually did get round to joining the war at the end of 1941, the USSR had already defeated the Germans outside Moscow. He also seems to forget that during the 1930s, and right up until the US declared war on Germany at the end of 1941, US corporations like Ford and General Motors were busy, in Germany itself, churning out tanks and other military vehicles for the Nazis by the shed load. In fact, when Britain bombed those plants, the US response was to stick in a claim for compensation for the damage to them. There were some ‘pre-lend lease’ supplies after June 1941 to the USSR, but these were tiny compared with the resources the USSR itself brought to bear at that time in the battle for Moscow. Lend-lease supplies proper only started after the Germans had been defeated outside Moscow, which was the turning point of the war.

It’s undoubtedly the case that the USSR benefited, after 1941, from US supplies, but that does not account for the technological advances that the USSR made during that period. Nor, of course, does it account for the difference between then and World War I. In the first war, adversity and a cruel, tyrannical rule back home brought revolution. In 1941-45, it brought one of the most heroic struggles of workers and peasants ever seen in defence of what they saw as ‘their state’. A Marxist has to see that some serious material change had occurred that brought about such a hugely different emotional and class response in the two cases.

Workers’ war
Workers’ war

Solidarity

On May 7 Sheffield call centre workers held a very solidly supported strike in defence of a sacked colleague and union rep. Around 95% of our members at the department for work and pensions site stayed away from work in a dispute over the sacking of high-profile union rep Lee Rock.

Lee was sacked for unsatisfactory attendance, despite the vast majority of his time off being related to his recognised disabilities. We believe he has been treated very harshly and fear the decision to dismiss him was influenced by his role as an effective rep who has been a thorn in management’s side.

The department failed to follow its own guidance on dealing with attendance management issues for disabled staff. Lee has the support of a senior union rep to help with his appeal and we have taken up his case with senior managers to press for reinstatement.

Solidarity
Solidarity